The present invention relates to character processing and, more particularly, to character processing of variant font characters.
In Chinese characters, a variant font character is pronounced the same and also has the same meaning as another Chinese character, but has a different shape. For instance,  (pronounced xe2x80x9ctsuboxe2x80x9d and meaning xe2x80x9cpotxe2x80x9d) is a variant character for  (pronounced the same and means the same). The variant font character as described above is a character that is not generally used and is rarely registered in a Chinese character dictionary for a word processor or the like. Various ways for inputting or displaying a variant font character on a screen have been developed and disclosed.
For instance, as a first example of the conventional technology in this field, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HEI 2-300848 discloses a xe2x80x9cVariant character font retrieving systemxe2x80x9d. This Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HEI 2-300848 discloses a system comprising a font data storing means for storing font data for various types of characters, and a font retrieving/information storing means for storing a storage address of corresponding font data indexed by the character code of the character and a storage address of font data corresponding to a variant font character for this character code. The variant character can be displayed on a screen by retrieving the font data from the font retrieving/information storing means using the character code for a corresponding arbitrary character to obtain a storage address for the font data.
As a second example of the conventional technology in this field, there has been disclosed the xe2x80x9cChinese characters classifying method, Chinese characters classification table, and Chinese character processing apparatusxe2x80x9d in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HEI 3-177963. This Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HEI 3-177963 discloses a system comprising a storing means for storing Chinese character information classified so that a group is formed by designating a character with a generally used font as a representative character and designating a character that is pronounced the same but has the different meaning as the representative character as a variant font character. If there is any such variant font character corresponding to a representative character, the variant font character is regarded as the same character. Thus, the storing means is accessed when an arbitrary Chinese character has a variant font character, and the variant font character for the Chinese character is outputted, printed or displayed.
Further, as a third example of the conventional technology, there has been disclosed the xe2x80x9cCharacter processing apparatusxe2x80x9d in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HEI 4-47445. This Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HEI 4-47445 discloses the technology in which, when a Chinese character is converted to a variant font character, candidate variant font characters are displayed in a form of a list by referring to a variant font character conversion dictionary in which variant font characters are stored. An operator is prompted to select a desired character from the list.
However, in each of the conventional systems described above, for instance, when a character code for a specific, modern Chinese character that is not used in Japanese is inputted, the character code installed in each of these systems is different. In addition fonts corresponding to character code for Chinese are not prepared in each of the systems, so that a character for the inputted character code is sometimes not displayed on a screen or is garbled into to a strange shape.
There is the Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (described as UCS hereinafter) in which groups of international characters and relationships between the character groups and coded expressions are defined. The term UCS is applied to IS010646, JISX 0221, or Unicode (Unicode is a trade mark of Unicode, Inc.), and in these standards all international characters are expressed with 16-bit character codes. For instance, if all the character UCS codes and fonts corresponding to the UCS character codes are stored in a character processing apparatus, and if text data is transacted with the UCS character codes, text data prepared in any language can be displayed on a screen. However, the UCS includes character codes for around 40,000 characters in total, and a substantially large memory space is required to store in a computer or the like all the fonts corresponding to these character codes. It is generally said that an ordinary person uses around 5000 characters, and it is very wasteful even to store fonts corresponding to character codes for characters usually not used in a character processing apparatus. Especially, the variant font characters as described above are those with fonts rarely used, and for this reason it may be said that it is not necessary to store all fonts corresponding to character code for variant font characters in a character processing apparatus. On the other hand, to reduce the required memory space, if the number of fonts is excessively reduced, in a case where a character code for a character with a font not stored in the character processing apparatus is inputted, the character can not be displayed or the character may be garbled into to a strange shape.
It is an object of the present invention to prevent the garbling of characters as well as to enable accurate screen display of characters, even when the character code for a character with a font not stored in the character processing apparatus is inputted, such that the number of fonts to be stored in a character processing apparatus and the memory space required for storing fonts are reduced.
In a character processing apparatus according to the present invention, character groups are divided to groups comprising representative characters and variant font characters. When a variant font character (character code) with a font not stored in the apparatus is inputted, a representative character belonging to the same group is displayed in place of the variant font character on a screen.
In the character processing apparatus according to the present invention, when a representative character is displayed on a screen in place of a variant font character (character code) with a font not stored in the apparatus, the representative character is displayed with a different color from that of other characters.
In the character processing apparatus according to the present invention, a representative character is not only displayed on a screen in place of a variant font character (character code) with a font not stored in the apparatus, but the character code itself for the variant font character is also converted to that for a representative character.
In the character processing apparatus according to the present invention, it is possible to efficiently process character code for around 40,000 characters based on the UCS.
In a character processing system according to the present invention, even when a variant font character (character code) with a font not stored in the character processing apparatus is inputted, a corresponding font is received from a font output device so that the corresponding variant font character can be displayed on a screen.
In the character processing system according to the present invention, required fonts for variant font characters can additionally be stored to make the processing for displaying characters on a screen more efficient.
In the character processing system according to the present invention, character codes for around 40,000 characters defined in the UCS can efficiently be processed.
In the character processing apparatus according to the present invention, character groups are classified into groups of representative and variant font characters. When a variant font character (character code) with a font not stored in the apparatus is inputted, a representative character belonging to the same group as the variant font character is printed on recording paper in place of the variant font character.
In a character processing method, character groups are divided into groups of representative characters and variant font characters. When a variant font character (character code) with a font not stored in the character processing apparatus is inputted, a representative character belonging to the same group as the variant font character is displayed on a screen in place of the variant font character.
In the character processing method according to the present invention, when a representative character belonging to the same group is displayed on a screen in place of a variant font character (character code) with a font not stored in the character processing apparatus, the color of the representative character is different from that of other characters.
In the character processing method according to the present invention, a representative character is not only displayed on a screen in place of a variant font character (character code) with a font not stored in the character processing apparatus, but the character code itself for the variant font character is also replaced with character code for the representative character.
In the character processing method according to the present invention, even when a variant font character (character code) with a font not stored in a character processing apparatus is inputted in the apparatus, corresponding font data is received from a font output device and the corresponding variant font character can be displayed on a screen.
In the character processing method according to the present invention, fonts for variant font characters can be added as needed, so that the processing for displaying characters on a screen can efficiently be executed.
In the character processing method according to the present invention, character code defined according to the UCS for around 40,000 characters can efficiently be processed.
A computer-readable medium according to the present invention enables execution of a program recorded therein by a computer and also makes it possible to display a representative character belonging to the same group on a screen, when a variant font character (character code) with a font not stored in the character processing apparatus is inputted, in place of the variant font character.
Other objects and features of this invention will become understood from the following description with reference to the accompanying drawings.